DomainBinge

SEDO is currently listing panoramio.info in its Recent Sales panel. The domain name apparently sold for $2k.
But to whom?

Here’s some interesting facts:

• Panoramio is a web-based, geo-tagged-image storage company that agreed to be acquired by Google on May 31st of this year.
• The whois record for the domain was updated yesterday and now reflects an acquisition company as the registrant.
• Where I sit in the world, the domain redirects to this site. That might change as a DNS change propagates, but we’ll see….

Anyone want to give odds on whether Google bought the domain?

Apple waited until the last minute to acquire the iphone.com domain. While the actual price paid to Michael Kovatch, who secured the domain in 1995, has not been made public, several reports have put the figure north of $1M USD (note: all reports seem to flow back to this excellent post about the domain sale on DomainTools Blog).

Seems cheap to me, considering the company just launched a revolution on the shoulders of the iPhone brand.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone

Take a gander at the sorted final results of Moniker’s live domain auction from this week’s NYC TRAFFIC conference. Do you need any more evidence of the investment potential for great domain names? I didn’t think so.

As an aside, DomainNameWire live blogged the auction from the conference.  Need any more evidence of the power of blogging?  I didn’t think so.

Some domains will always have intrinsic value. Think news.com, suppplies.com, and trucks.com. These are the ultra-generics - subjects that are not overly sensitive to the constantly shifting focus of our collective mind. People are always looking for news. Purchasing managers are always thinking about supplies. And construction workers are always thinking about trucks (well, maybe not always).

The value of “hot topic” domains, in contrast, shifts as the focus of the collective mind shifts. Think WorldSeries.com, 2008election.com, and even parishiltonjailpics.com. Determining the value of these domains is a bit trickier than others because it requires a timing component and an assessment of the sustainability of the underlying topic.

Surface computing has been a hot topic since Jeff Han delivered his presentation on multi-touch interfaces at the TED conference last year.

The surface computing concept - using the surface of a computer monitor as the primary user interface - received a significant boost a few weeks ago when Microsoft announced its plans to develop a product line based on the technology.  (the Microsoft demo videos are amazing).

The race for generic surface computing domains started just before the Microsoft announcement and peaked on the day of.  And deals are already being made.  Surface.tv recently sold for $27k, which is apparently the highest price ever paid for a .tv domain.

How Najafi Cos. Hit The Buyout Jackpot - WSJ.com

Did you hear? Najafi Cos. sold Network Solutions for a cool $800M (and a 3500% profit). Nice…and encouraging for the domaining set.

Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal article on the deal focuses on the private equity aspect of the story…and all but misses the underlying domain aspect of the story. I know private equity LBO’s are shaping up to be the financial story of 2007, but it’s too bad they missed the “there’s gold in them thar hills” angle.

Schilling has more.